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About 300 from WNC expected to march in Raleigh

ASHEVILLE – Organizers say about 300 people from Western North Carolina will join protestors from 18 states on Saturday for the Moral March on Raleigh.

The Forward Together Moral Movement protest starts at 9:30 a.m. near Shaw University. Protestors will march about an hour later down Fayetteville Street to the Capitol.

State NAACP president Rev. William Barber said in a statement on Monday the protestors will challenge “the immoral, unconstitutional policies” of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and the GOP-controlled General Assembly.

He said the march would kick off another year of nonviolent direct action, lawsuits and voter education.

More than 900 people were arrested last year in his Moral Mondays protests for refusing to leave the rotunda outside the state House and Senate. Civil disobedience is not planned on Saturday, NAACP said.

Barber’s Mountain Moral Monday in August attracted more than 5,000 people to downtown Asheville.

He is calling for rolling back the restrictions to voting in North Carolina, among other changes. Lawmakers at the end of the session last year passed a law that required voter identification by 2016, ended straight-party ticket voting and election day registration among other changes.

“I think that people see that what’s happening in Raleigh and the policies that are being protested are having an impact here in Western North Carolina,” said Rev. Lisa Bovee-Kemper, assistant minister at Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville and a co-chair of the Mountain People’s Assembly.

Bovee-Kemper was among those arrested last year.

She said four buses carrying 224 people would leave Asheville. At least 40 people from her church are driving down and she expects more from the area will go.

The Moral March is part of the HKonJ (Historic Thousands on Jones Street) protests, which started in 2007 under Barber’s leadership.

Parker Sloan, a vice chairman and spokesman for the Buncombe County Democratic Party, said the party would use the energy of the protests to vote Republicans out of office.

“This weekend thousands from across North Carolina and the nation will come together to stand against the injustices that our Republican-led legislature has committed against its own people,” he said.

Barber has called for rolling back voter restrictions, better funding for public schools, expanding unemployment and Medicaid, opposing the constitutional ban on gay marriage, protecting the environment and fighting inequalities in the criminal justice system, among other ideas.

“Last year, they had their time to vote and abuse power,” he said in a statement on Monday. “This year, we will vote with our voices to show the power of the people.”